Isn't this just another way to recycle and re-surface the story?'Aspects' implies the core is still true even if some details are not. So unless someone has a good grasp of the entire situation, the net result is a sneaky reaffirmation of the bounder meme.

Newt was in charge of the attack on Impeaching Bill Clinton. While he was screwing Calista. Who worked in his ofice. While he was married to wife #2.

Wife #1 was his math teacher. Who was obviously older than her student. But he wanted a good excuse NOT to get drafted to go to Vietnam. And, high on this list (outside of running to Canada) ... was being married.

So, Newt married and immediately had a kid.

Why are there conservatives falling over themselves to now back Newt?

Because there's terror that none of the other GOP contendahs could win.

While most Americans really don't spend all that much time worrying about politics.

I don't think Mitt has a chance.

I don't think Herman Cain stands a chance.

But, on the other hand? Perry seems to attract the usual American voter, who isn't all that interested in politics.

On the other hand? Newt's like hard core porn. For those who are enthralled by the GOP primary process ... there are enough "grass root" types ... in Iowa and New Hampshire ... That seem to be "professionals" at being (or representing) "interested voters."

"aspects distorted" == we just made it all up and are owning up to it 12 years later. Reminds of three days *after* the 2008 election when the WaPo "ombudsman" said "you know, it looks like our election coverage was completely slanted towards Obama".

They want a horse race to cover. They keep promoting alternatives to Mitt so they can have something to say about the GOP nomination process. For the same reasons Selig promotes interleague games and more wild card teams.

Sooo....married one of his high school teachers when he was 19 and she was 26. Apparently she is one of those women we are seeing dragged out of school for fiddling with the students here in modern times. It would appear that young Newt was a victim of female school teacher predation.

So, the "aspect" of the Gingrich divorce story that was "distorted" is that his wife wasn't dying. She was in the hospital recovering from cancer surgery when he chose to discuss their divorce. She just wasn't dying.

That makes his behavior okay. Almost chivalrous when you think about it. The discussion was bound to be painful for her and there she was in the hospital where should could have ready access pain medication. Choosing that time and place for a discussion of divorce exemplifies the type of consideration for another person that makes Gingrich a shinning example for us all.

I cannot understand how some could have come to believe Gingrich is a self-centered prick. Must have been the fact we were told his wife was dying -- not just bed-ridden and recovering from surgery -- when he choose to press her about their divorce.

The original story was that Newt wanted to callously force a divorce on his dying wife, so he could trade her in for a new wife.

Now we find that the wife - not Newt - filed for divorce, she wasn't dying, and that the entire event was considered unremarkable by the family.

Other than that, as they say, the story was correct.

Newt left the story unchallenged all these years because explaining it to a skeptical reporter was unlikely to make him look any better. Classic political hit job from the party opposed to the "politics of personal destruction." Kudos for WaPo for setting the record straight - just 20 years too late.

I've become a Newt fan now after Carol's revelation. Anyone who had the power at age 19 to forsee, in 1962, that they needed to devise someway to get a draft deferment, other than college, to avoid being drafted and possibly be sent to Viet Nam has the kind of insight we need as POTUS.

It means that they hope that Newt will be the candidate because they know that the innuendo and lies that they have lathered on for the last decade or so will be firmly ingrained in the dim minds of the sheeple and that they will STILL be able to beat him over the head with untruth and gin up righteous indignation from the morons who mainly watch ABC, NBC, CBS, CNN and MSNBC.

The press knows that critical thinking is not needed by the masses.....they will do that for us....thank you.

The press beats down those who have a real chance to win or to save the country before they can get their message out and elevates the ones that they plan to destroy later because they have saved the worst for last.

This is good news for Newt but probably won't be widely distributed. It's also very hard to know whether Obama can be beaten at all. Much of that side is impervious to facts, and cannot even begin to think about alternative explanations. We still don't know what the OWS movement is about, aside from having sex with animals and socialism. If there's something else, I wouldn't know what it was. At least Newt sticks with his own species. That's refreshing.

1) The biopsy was negative, hence the "cancer" part was always a smear. Cancer scare, maybe, but cancer? No.

2) According to his daughter, Newt gathered the whole family to announce the divorce months before the tumor biopsy. Her mother told them that she was the one that thought that divorce was the only option.

3) Again, according to the daughter, Newt was behind getting the whole family to be at the hospital to support their mother during her biopsy and that divorce was never mentioned. They all hugged when the results came in.

4) According to the daughter, her mother never would speak about the matter with reporters. The daughter was upset that the mother wouldn't set the record straight and the mother said that it wasn't her job to do that. On the other hand she never heard her mother tell the wrong version of events in her presence.

And in other news, the New York Times grudgingly concedes that Walter Duranty's reports of happy peasant, bountiful harvests, and sumptuous feasts in Ukraine may have been mildly exaggerated. (But they still refuse to return the Pulitzer.)

I am not a Newt fan - I even did an album, years ago, called "Newt Hates Me" - but he's been on my radar lately as one of the few GOP candidates with the intelligence to debate on a level I'm comfortable with (everyone else seems more-or-less like a cartoon). Am I willing to overlook his personal life to elect him? If I have to - in order to defeat Zero - yes, but I won't like it.

The Boomers, to their generation's eternal shame, have destroyed (amongst many, many other things) the concept of marriage in this country - reducing it, from a deep commitment to others, to a selfish boyfriend/girlfriend shacking up until you find someone/something possibly more attractive. Unfortunately, until they're gone, we're stuck with the dregs of their existence and Newt is another poster boy for that reality.

I'll take him over Zero. I'll take him over Romney. I'll even take him over Cain, or Perry, if necessary. But I will not pretend he's anything more than what he is:

The press beats down those who have a real chance to win or to save the country before they can get their message out and elevates the ones that they plan to destroy later because they have saved the worst for last.